The best figure of every species, according to Halichoeres

[Faelrin]

@Flaffy How I feel too. They have been some of my favorite prehistoric animals since I was a kid (because of like that one book I had as a kid, that I've posted about many times in the past), and with how few on the market there are, this was a gold mine. So thankful many of my favorites that were on my wishlist for quite a long time, were represented. I know I got my hands on quite a number of them.

In particular I got:

Spoiler

-Arandaspis
-Astraspis (which I now also have a plush of from PRI's Paleozoic Pals)
-Birkenia
-Boreaspis
-conodont
-Doryaspis
-Drepanaspis
-Furcacauda
-Jamoytius
-Pharyngolepis
-Phlebolepis
-Pituriaspis
-Promissum
-Rhinopteraspis
-Sacabambaspis
-Thelodus

[close]

That's over half of the 27 fish I ordered, among the many other things.

[Stegotyranno420]

@Halichoeres you are tempting me to go on a unrelated tangent on semantic evolution   

[SBell]

@Flaffy How I feel too. They have been some of my favorite prehistoric animals since I was a kid (because of like that one book I had as a kid, that I've posted about many times in the past), and with how few on the market there are, this was a gold mine. So thankful many of my favorites that were on my wishlist for quite a long time, were represented. I know I got my hands on quite a number of them.

In particular I got:

Spoiler

-Arandaspis
-Astraspis (which I now also have a plush of from PRI's Paleozoic Pals)
-Birkenia
-Boreaspis
-conodont
-Doryaspis
-Drepanaspis
-Furcacauda
-Jamoytius
-Pharyngolepis
-Phlebolepis
-Pituriaspis
-Promissum
-Rhinopteraspis
-Sacabambaspis
-Thelodus

[close]

That's over half of the 27 fish I ordered, among the many other things.

I got so many...and somewhat regret how many I chose not to get.
But it was a great way to increase the taxonomic diversity!

[Halichoeres]

I forgot to take a picture of Centrosaurus! I'll do that next time I'm home. I think we'll see more ceratopsids from PNSO, but for Safari it might be a while given they've retired several recently.

The only thing that looks a little suspect is maybe the first digit of the right hand, but I don't claim to be an expert.

I was making a joke with aspis (or whatever the root is) meaning shield and gladius meaning sword lol

Oh, I got it! I just took it in the direction of other armaments. We could go nuts on various kinds of Greek swords, too, it turns out: spatha, xiphos, makhaira....

Halichoeres you are tempting me to go on a unrelated tangent on semantic evolution   

Well don't let me stop you.

@Flaffy How I feel too. They have been some of my favorite prehistoric animals since I was a kid (because of like that one book I had as a kid, that I've posted about many times in the past), and with how few on the market there are, this was a gold mine. So thankful many of my favorites that were on my wishlist for quite a long time, were represented. I know I got my hands on quite a number of them.

In particular I got:

Spoiler

-Arandaspis
-Astraspis (which I now also have a plush of from PRI's Paleozoic Pals)
-Birkenia
-Boreaspis
-conodont
-Doryaspis
-Drepanaspis
-Furcacauda
-Jamoytius
-Pharyngolepis
-Phlebolepis
-Pituriaspis
-Promissum
-Rhinopteraspis
-Sacabambaspis
-Thelodus

[close]

That's over half of the 27 fish I ordered, among the many other things.

I got so many...and somewhat regret how many I chose not to get.
But it was a great way to increase the taxonomic diversity!

Yup, the LIFE game is like nothing else before it. I have more jawless fish than most collectors, I'd wager, including a fair number of resin or 3d-printed models, and even so the outright majority of my jawless fish are from Oumcraft. For some lineages, like anaspids, thelodonts, and galeaspids, they're the only ones I have!

[Concavenator]

@Halichoeres Thanks for checking again. They probably got it right, though I still find the orientation of Eofauna's Triceratops manus to be more convincing.

[Halichoeres]

Sessile eukaryotes of the Silurian! These are all from the Life... game by Oumcraft, with designs based on Palaeopedia.


Goniophyllum
Scale: 1:5
Middle to Late Silurian
Etymology: Gr. "angled leaf"
No actual leaves on this rugose coral, of course, but four mineralized, triangular flaps that closed up to form a pyramid. That way the squishy, anemone-like animal could hide from anything that wanted to slurp it up. I'm periodically tempted to order a dozen more of these and other sedentary seafloor organisms. Maybe when I get around to actually painting all the other things I have that need painting.


Caryocrinites
Scale: 1:7
Middle Silurian
Etymology: Gr. "kernel lily"
Though it looks a bit like a crinoid, this is a cystoid echinoderm. Cystoids differed from crinoids in having a theca with tentacles on top, rather than an open cup-shaped body. Specimens of Caryocrinites from the United States sometimes have little pits on the lower half of their theca, which appear to be places where little commensal/parasitic organisms attached themselves, benefiting from the elevation offered by the cystoid's stalk. As far as I know, nobody knows what these freeloaders were like, only that they don't seem to have been feeding directly on the cystoid itself.


I had a few paint chips lost in transit from various Oumcraft figures, but this is the only one that actually broke. Unlike a real echinoderm, this one for some reason hasn't regenerated the broken arm.


This one photo spans a lot of animal diversity: a deuterostome, a protostome, and a cnidarian.


Zosterophyllum
Scale: 1:15
Late Silurian - Middle Devonian
Etymology: Gr. "girdle/belt leaf" but named after the modern eelgrass genus Zostera
This primitive, probably paraphyletic genus didn't even have leaves, really. It had some vascular tissue but was probably closely associated with water, and bore sporangia along the upper parts of each stem. I get way too excited about nondescript pioneers of new ecosystems like this one. Without plants like this, Earth may never have had forests.


I have nothing contemporary at a similar scale, so these herbivores from 120 million years in the future will have to work. They seem unimpressed with the Silurian salad bar.


Cooksonia
Scale: 1:3
Middle Silurian - Middle Devonian
Etymology: after Australian paleobotanist Isabel Cookson
The earliest known land plant, although if we had access to live specimens and their DNA, I imagine we'd split them up into many genera based on characteristics that we can't observe in the organic imprints that are all we have of them. Simple stems with little knobbly sporangia, only a few centimeters high, these are even more primitive pioneers than the zosterophylls.


Thanks to Oumcraft, I have the foundations of the earliest terrestrial ecosystems. Just missing some fungi and mites.

[Flaffy]

I'm kicking myself for not getting the plants. I highly doubt any other company will make them.

[Faelrin]

@Flaffy I think they might still be available to order? Website is still up. For example:

https://oumcraft.com/collections/era-4-silurian

Can always try reaching out to her on FB, if she still is on there anyways.

I think the only one of these I got was Cooksonia, cause of that book I read when I was like 11. Kind of regret not picking up the others.

@Halichoeres It is quite fun to imagine how otherworldly it would have been with only these in sight, especially for early land plant things. How lucky we are to get a glimpse of those times with their fossil remains.

That said, isn't there something out that has like a mild resemblence to Cooksonia, etc? Also why does every reconstruction give it the green stalk and yellow tips lol? I swear it was like that in the book I have too (and read back then as a kid).

[ceratopsian]

The yellow tips give it a slightly dandelion on the lawn vibe!  Kudos to her for offering plants.

[Newt]

@Faelrin - you may be thinking of the whisk ferns, Psilotum spp.



The breadth and ambition of Oumcraft's work continues to astonish me.

[Halichoeres]

Thanks for visiting, everyone!

I'm kicking myself for not getting the plants. I highly doubt any other company will make them.

It does seem like a long shot that anyone else will make Silurian plants. At least Cooksonia would be pretty easy to make custom, compared to, say, a ginkgo! The Life minis are still available, but I would guess shipping is more expensive for you now.

Halichoeres It is quite fun to imagine how otherworldly it would have been with only these in sight, especially for early land plant things. How lucky we are to get a glimpse of those times with their fossil remains.

That said, isn't there something out that has like a mild resemblence to Cooksonia, etc? Also why does every reconstruction give it the green stalk and yellow tips lol? I swear it was like that in the book I have too (and read back then as a kid).

Yeah, that's a big part of why I'm in this hobby, is to visualize the past. These minis made that a lot easier.

I like Newt's suggestion below of the whisk fern. Less similar in overall appearance, but there are still tiny, moisture-bound plants like true mosses, clubmosses, and liverworts. Now you mention it, Walking with Monsters also portrayed Cooksonia with yellow sporangia. The stalks would certainly have been green because that's where photosynthesis happened, but sporangia can be a range of colors. I feel like I've seen brown more often than any other color, but they could be anywhere from yellow to red to almost black. Palaeopedia made them red, so that's a little variation!

The yellow tips give it a slightly dandelion on the lawn vibe!  Kudos to her for offering plants.

I'm so glad she did! Maybe if there's ever a Carboniferous expansion the ranks of plants could be increased.

The breadth and ambition of Oumcraft's work continues to astonish me.

Yup, maybe some of the German flat metal manufacturers have had similar scope, but nobody has paired that with this kind of scale. I've had these a year and a half and still have dozens left to photograph.

[Halichoeres]

Protostomes of the Ordovician! These are all from the Life... game by Oumcraft.


Cyrtoceras
Scale: 1:7
Early Ordovician - Late Carboniferous
Etymology: L./Gr. "shortened horn"
A stubby, slightly curved nautiloid common through a large part of the Paleozoic. As with most cephalopod fossils, the soft parts are speculative, but seem pretty reasonable. A nice addition to my Paleozoic shelf.


Estonioceras
Scale: 1:9
Middle Ordovician
Etymology: Gr. "Estonian horn"
Later in the Paleozoic, ammonites would also adopt this "not-quite-a-tight-spiral" shape. But nautiloids did it first.


Cephalopod party.


Selenopeltis
Scale: 1:12 - 1:15
Early - Late Ordovician
Etymology: Gr. "moon [goddess] shield"
A large trilobite with long, swept-back pleural spines. You can find these all over Europe and North Africa. This one is an appropriate color given its name.


The Ordovician didn't have any sharks, of course.


Hyolithes
Scale: 1:3 - 1:4
Late Cambrian - Early Permian
Etymology: Gr. "upsilon stone" (I think)
Hyolithes gives its name to the Hyolitha, a clade of seafloor-dwelling animals with conical shells and circular-to-elliptical flaps called opercula to cover the opening. At the junction between the two, there are these curved, mineralized spines called helens (sing. helen). They aren't quite like the appendages of any other known animal: not tentacles, not antennae, not barbels. They would probably have been stiff and protruded away from the opening in the shell, and the best guess is that they were used for raising the shell above the substrate or accomplishing other movements. The fact that helens bear muscle scars supports that interpretation. Anyway, always cool to have a mysterious animal like this on one's shelf.


Hyoliths and archaeocyathids only overlapped briefly, since the latter were extinct by the Ordovician.

Anyway, that's not the last of my Oumcraft miniatures, but it's the last of the Ordovician ones! Maybe I should pull all my Ordovician critters together for a group shot. (Obviously, the majority are from Oumcraft.)

[Crackington]

It's been interesting seeing these painted versions of the Oumcraft figures as the ones I have are in plain grey. They are very nicely done figures and look great in colour!

I hope she is able to do a part two for the game/figures in the future and take in later geological eras.

[SBell]

It's been interesting seeing these painted versions of the Oumcraft figures as the ones I have are in plain grey. They are very nicely done figures and look great in colour!

I hope she is able to do a part two for the game/figures in the future and take in later geological eras.

I think we all agree that a follow up by O @Oammararak in later geologic periods would be amazing!

[Halichoeres]

It's been interesting seeing these painted versions of the Oumcraft figures as the ones I have are in plain grey. They are very nicely done figures and look great in colour!

I hope she is able to do a part two for the game/figures in the future and take in later geological eras.

I think we all agree that a follow up by O @Oammararak in later geologic periods would be amazing!

Yeah, she did a great job painting, especially considering how small they are and that she did all 270 or so herself! I think she made one other painted set, but I have no idea if anybody bought it.

As for a follow-up, that would be wonderful, and I know she had plans for hundreds more miniatures, but I wonder if the fact that the first Kickstarter just barely made it dampened her enthusiasm.

[SBell]

It's been interesting seeing these painted versions of the Oumcraft figures as the ones I have are in plain grey. They are very nicely done figures and look great in colour!

I hope she is able to do a part two for the game/figures in the future and take in later geological eras.

I think we all agree that a follow up by O @Oammararak in later geologic periods would be amazing!

Yeah, she did a great job painting, especially considering how small they are and that she did all 270 or so herself! I think she made one other painted set, but I have no idea if anybody bought it.

As for a follow-up, that would be wonderful, and I know she had plans for hundreds more miniatures, but I wonder if the fact that the first Kickstarter just barely made it dampened her enthusiasm.

Perhaps. But our enthusiasm should make up for it!

[Sim]

I would be interested in your opinions on extant animal figures if you collected them too!  Just imagine all the fish!

[Halichoeres]

I would be interested in your opinions on extant animal figures if you collected them too!  Just imagine all the fish!

I have a very small extant fish collection, mainly centered on the clades I worked on for my dissertation (Characiformes + Cithariniformes). There are 1700+ species, of which maybe nine have been made as figures. A few years ago I did a walkaround on the Animal Toy Forum of the Bandai characin: https://animaltoyforum.com/index.php?topic=2206.0 These days I don't visit the Animal Toy Forum often, mostly because I don't want to be tempted to expand into a hobby I don't have room for.

I didn't know you were interested in fish! (Besides megalodon and Edestus.) I'm happy to share my thoughts if you're curious about anything. Gwangi and SBell will probably also steer you right, and I think they're more active on ATF.

[bmathison1972]

Tim, did you see these December Bandai releases: 




Please feel free to delete if you don't want pics that aren't yours in this thread.

[SBell]

I would be interested in your opinions on extant animal figures if you collected them too!  Just imagine all the fish!

I have a very small extant fish collection, mainly centered on the clades I worked on for my dissertation (Characiformes + Cithariniformes). There are 1700+ species, of which maybe nine have been made as figures. A few years ago I did a walkaround on the Animal Toy Forum of the Bandai characin: https://animaltoyforum.com/index.php?topic=2206.0 These days I don't visit the Animal Toy Forum often, mostly because I don't want to be tempted to expand into a hobby I don't have room for.

I didn't know you were interested in fish! (Besides megalodon and Edestus.) I'm happy to share my thoughts if you're curious about anything. Gwangi and SBell will probably also steer you right, and I think they're more active on ATF.

I mean...as active as on anything. But I do have some strong biased opinions on some fish, yes